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EMC Unity Hardware specification

EMC just introduced it’s new midrange storage system at EMCWorld in Las Vegas. EMC’s new Unity product line is THE new midrange system and it sets new standards for storage with compelling simplicity, a modern design, affordable prices, and flexible deployment.

With speeding up the business demands these days there are a lot of IT professionals struggling with the demands of their jobs – including storage. They are experiencing data growth like never before at a time when budget isn’t increasing. They are wearing many hats, handling servers, storage, networking, virtualization and much more, so they are spread extremely thin! I experienced the same transition the last years. Where I performed once deep technical discussions for the one and only mission critical application I noticed this fades and I talk more about SLAs and guarantees, performance, numbers etc. etc. With this a lot of technical people disappear. Today, if you are working in a data center, you need to wear many different hats. You need to ensure your resources are able to meet many different SLAs as just mentioned and you need to ensure “your internal customers” needs are fully met.

So lets dive into some known first hour specifications.

Comparison: Before & After (VNX5800 To Unity 600F)

BEFORE

AFTER

IMPROVEMENT

FORM FACTOR

7U

2U

>70%

CABLES

30

6

80%

POWER CONSUMPTION

1495W

703W

>50%

RACK INSTALL

>60 min

minutes

‘-

PERFORMANCE

101K

295K

3x faster

A unified VNX would take up 7 Rack U’s . You have the storage processors providing block access, the Data Movers (for file access) and the Control Stations for file management. With Unity, its all integrated. No additional file hardware, no longer are their two operating systems. And a Unity building block starts in 2 RackU’s, and that includes the 1st 25 drives.

Think of all the cables to set up a unified VNX, for the SP’s, the Data Movers, the Control Station, etc. You need 30 cables. With Unity its down to 6 cables.

Less hardware less power consumption.

The rack and stack can be accomplished in substantially less time. This is debatable and you need to have knowledge of a VNX, but still very impressive.

All achievable with approximately 3x more performance. Again performance numbers will vary and are dependent on workloads and other factors. But basically this is what EMC says.

Hardware specs Unity models.

UNITY 300 (F)

UNITY 400 (F)

UNITY 500 (F)

UNITY600 (F)

MAX # OF DRIVES SUPPORTED

150

250

350* (à500)

500* (à1000)

LARGEST DRIVE SIZE: FLASH HDD

3.2TBs*6TBs

PROCESSOR

Intel 6c/1.6GHz

Intel 8c/2.4GHz

Intel 10c/2.6GHz

Intel 12c/2.5GHz

MEMORY

24 GB / SP

48 GB / SP

64 GB / SP

128 GB / SP

UNITY HYBRID FAST CACHE (USABLE)

800 GB

1.2 TB

3.2 TB

6 TB

LUNS

500*

750*

1000*

4000

FILE SYSTEMS

500

750

1000

1500

VVOLS

9000

9000

13500

30000

SNAPSHOTS

1000

8000

8000

16000

REPLICATION SESSIONS

1000

1000

1500

2000

POOLS

20

20

40

100

LUN SIZE

256 TB

FILESYSTEM SIZE

64 TB

NAS SERVERS

90

90

128

128

Note the Max# of drives on the Unity 500 (F) and 600 (F) and how this is expected to increase by the end of the year. Also, note the Flash drive max capacities will increase.

About Roy Mikes

Roy Mikes has developed a deep knowledge of virtualization, storage and Cloud in a broad perspective over the past 15 years, but also streamlines his focus on VMware and EMC Technology. Because of that knowledge and focus, Roy works as a Cloud and Storage Technologist Specialist, Data Center Architect Specialist and VMware Certified Professional.